She blinked at Josh.
“Your wrist?”
She presented her hand to the ticket seller. “Sorry. There’s just so much to take in.”
“It’s her first time,” Josh said conspiratorially.
“And I’m very excited,” she added, not wanting to be left out of the fun.
Once they got through the gates, he steered her to the race officials’ tent, where he registered. They knew him, which made the process go faster, apparently. She caught snippets of their conversation, about his safety still being valid, no modifications since his last race, and why they never see him on Wednesday nights.
“That’s the cheaper night to race,” he murmured to her as they headed into the stands. Below them, an aggressive-looking Charger was doing tire burnouts just before the start line.
“Why don’t you race on Wednesdays?”
“Because it takes an hour to get here after work, so I’m always at the end of the race list, and then it’s an hour to get home. And then I have to wake up for work the next day. Tomorrow, I can sleep in. I’m not a morning person at the best of times, but after a late night?”
She was deeply amused. “So far, you’ve been nothing but charming. I find this hard to believe.”
“Oh, I have a cross side, Miss Fischer.”
She didn’t believe it for a second. She twisted away from the track so she was looking at him full on. “What do I have to do to get you to call me Monica?”
“Not be the boss’s daughter.”
She snapped her fingers. “Then for tonight, I amnot.”
He caught her hand and used it to spin her around, pointing her to an empty row at the back of the stands. “That’s not how life works,” he murmured in her ear. “Now let’s sit down and learn more about racing.”
5
“You’re bossy,”Monica said under her breath as they climbed the bleachers.
“You literally asked me to teach you things.” He paused a beat as they took their seats. “Have you always had simpering tutors?”
She cocked her head to the side. “Not when I was in boarding school in Switzerland, but at college…yes?”
“Did your father put his name on a building, maybe?”
She winced. “Yeah.”
“Mmm. Well, your father’s never going to know that I’m doing this, and if he did, he wouldn’t like it, so don’t expect me to treat you the same way the Dean of Princess Studies at Yale—”
“Business at NYU—”
“Honestly sounds the same to me.” Then he grinned.
And she had to admit, it sounded the same to her, too. She changed the subject back to the topic at hand. “I know what a burnout is. Warming up the tires.”
He nodded. “And how do they do that?”
“No clue.”
He told her about line locks and the different tire types as they waited for the next two cars to crawl out of the pits. When it got loud, he leaned in.
“All right. Here we go. Now this is where we start to train our gut call instincts.” Josh’s hand brushed up her spine lightly as he shifted, sitting up straighter. “Is that little shitbox going to take the GTR?”
She twisted her head to the side. “Is it?”
